Gauge and Measurements

Using the knit stitch, make a swatch (test piece) 20 stitches wide by 10 rows up

Measure how many stitches per inch you made across and how many rows up [for metric use mm or cm]

Write down this information

WIDTH OR TORSO MEASUREMENT:

Measure your dog around the torso from between the middle of the shoulder blades to behind the front legs and back up

Take this torso measurement and divide by 5

Comet's torso was 29 inches so that meant his knitted dog sweater measurements came to five 5-inch sections with a remainder of one 4-inch section to create as a filler [in retrospect, I could have created five 5.8-inch sections instead since 29/5 = 5.8]

Since my knitting tension is 4 stitches per inch, I cast on 20 stitches (4 st per inch x 5 inches) for each section

If your knitting tension is 5 stitches per inch, you'd cast on 24 or 25 stitches, depending on whether the row needed an even number of stitches or not, for a dog with a 29-inch torso. Naturally the numbers change for different size torsos. If you have any trouble figuring this out, contact me.

LENGTH MEASUREMENTS:

There will be three lengths that are important:

From between the shoulders to the base of the tail = base length

From between the shoulders to the end of the rib cage = side length

From behind the front legs to the end of the rib cage = belly length

Measure the lengths and write them down.

Ready to Start Knitting?

Now that the preliminaries are out of the way, it's time to actually start knitting.